Meeting Agenda Contents

Meeting Agenda Contents

What: One agenda format for your team meetings

Why: Meetings are one of the most challenging team activities you face on projects, especially if the project schedule is tight. Bad meetings can destroy team spirit. Bad meetings are seen as a waste of time and can even give "project management" a bad name. It's worth some thought and preparation time to pull them off well, such that they truly add value.

How: Prepare an agenda ahead of time and distribute it to the team. For each item on your agenda, be sure to define the following:

•Objective and Deliverables: What do you want to accomplish during the meeting? What physical deliverables should come out of the meeting? This will help you properly guide the discussion and the level of detail covered in the meeting.

•Owner: Identify the owner of the item. They should contribute any preparatory materials before the meeting and come prepared to make sure the item is properly addressed in the meeting.

•Timeslot: Assign a timeslot for each item and be sure to stick to it. Keeping each item on track will keep the entire meeting on track. If an item needs more time, you can come back to it at the end of the meeting if enough time remains. Alternately, if you decide to spend more time on the item right then due to its criticality, stop and together adjust your agenda accordingly, to make sure you’ll still accomplish all the objectives of your meeting.

One Team’s Project Meeting agenda

Contributed by Global Brain Inc., QRPD Methodology,

Item

/

Objective, Deliverables

/

Owner

/

Timeslot

Review current action items, record status / Understand what actions are still open and clarify what work remains on them, including team member responsibilities (NOTE: main emphasis here is to communicate and understand dependencies, not to do detailed status dumps in the meeting) / Irene (Project Leader) / 1 – 1:15
Review critical issues and dependencies list / Understand state of critical dependencies; do we need to invoke any backup plans? Do we have any new critical issues to add to the list?
Specifically review the results of the testing for Issue #2, performance of third party software. / Irene
Dave (technical lead) / 1:15 – 1:45
Review milestones list / Look ahead to upcoming milestones (next 2 months), discuss any perceived threats to the date; assign actions / Irene (Project Leader) / 1:45 to 2:00
Re-cap new action items / Make sure everyone understands what new work they’ve been given and is committed to making the date / Irene / 2:00 – 2:15